Fragile: A Novel (Jones Cooper Book 1)

Small town, old secrets, missing girls. Who done it?uhh, who cares.From the very beginning of this book, we're pretty sure where the road is going to lead.The problem is, the journey on that road is pretty predictable and uninteresting enoughto make us feel a little indifferent.One missing girl ignites an avalanche of ugly memories and guilt whenanother girl goes missing years later.Everybody in this little town is connected by either teen-age lust or old high school resentments.The town shrink is married to the town police detective who used to date...well,you get the idea. All are enmeshed in some kind of dysfunctional relationship andthe author spends way too much time getting to the root of it all.You find yourself muttering "move ON with it "Cookie cutter characters and soap opera dialog complete this dismal picture

This book is not about Detective Jones Cooper solving a case. Neither was the first book in the series. In fact, Jones Cooper is not even the main protagonist. If there is a protagonist, it is his wife the psychiatrist, although she had only a small part in the first book. So don’t be fooled by the book description. The book is really about the crappy town called The Hollows and all of the pathetic losers who still live there, wishing they had left after a really awful high school experience. Yes, and I got that the first 10 times the author made that point. And it got boring. Really boring. My boredom wasn’t relieved by interesting dialogue between characters either because there was a scarcity of any dialogue except some grouchy exchanges between nearly everyone. The book is 90 percent internal dialogue and descriptions of the dysfunctional lives and pasts of virtually everyone. I didn’t finish it. There was no one to like, no one to be interested in, no reason to keep reading.

I have read several of Ms. Unger’s novels, and I always enjoy their thought-provoking nature, this one emphasizing the fragility of life, as well as how our pasts affect our personalities, our presents, and even our futures. I like Ms. Unger’s character development in that all her characters are complex, not completely heroic or completely evil...Jones Cooper, a detective in the small town called The Hollows, is a hero in the eyes of most of the townspeople, someone who remained in town instead of heading to the big city supposedly to take care of his ailing mother; however, Jones keeps secrets, and as the story unfolds, we learn he is not the hero the townspeople think he is. Unger also tries to connect how their natures are affected by what happens to them...violence often perpetrates more violence in future generations. Others try to do the right thing because they see those they love trying to do the right thing. The author also shows how people keep secrets, second guess their decisions, many of the complexities of life put forward using her characters and their experiences.In this novel, two incidents of missing teenaged girls, occurring years apart in the same small town trigger emotions and long-held secrets. And while we may think we know who is responsible , the full story is not revealed until the final pages of the novel. I would give the novel 4 1/2 stars for its thought-provoking nature.

This book had me reading into the night, especially once I reached the second half. My only criticism, and it is fairly minor, is that the denouement went on for too long. Once the action was over, there was a bit too much philosophizing and reflection. To be fair, the author did throw in a few surprises in those last pages, but they were mostly wrapping up some loose ends and talking about the meaning of life. Maybe I was just tired from reading for so long, but it seemed to me to be about 15 pages too much. Definitely worth the time to read, though, and I will continue to read the author. This is my third by her and she has quickly become a favorite!

This is a brilliant novel. It weaves an intricate web of the lives of many characters. But probably the strongest character is not a person, but a location: the town known as The Hollows. What is it about The Hollows that drew so many of its young population back there, after they swore upon graduating from high school that they would never return? This is a complex story, full of complex characters, with the past, present, and future tied up in an intricate web of lies, half-truths, violence, psychological studies, familial influences, domestic violence, bullying, and a bit of psychic energy. “What a tangled web we weave...”

It isn’t any kind of “whodunnit” because you know midway through, who did it. After that, it’s all reflection, regret, angst, and philosophizing. I remember really liking Lisa Unger years ago. I decided to pick up another one of her books for the energy and tension I had come to know. This one was plodding. I see the main character, Jones Cooper, is in a subsequent novel. I may have to miss that one.

This was a truly intriguing read. The years covering the town over decades is something readers who grew up in town, suburbs can identify with easily. The characters and their personalities emerge slowly and backstories make them understandable if not always relatable. For me, it was hard to get "into" the book. It took time to realize it was a mystery. Sometimes it was hard to tell if what was being described was past or present. Despite these issues which are probably unique to me, i thoroghly enjoyed the book. The ties that bind past and present are never fully gone.

Exactly as described, perfect

Of all of Lisa's books, this is my favourite so far. Fast paced, I was gripped and sorry when it ended.

Excellent service and price

Lisa Unger weaves past and present, the tangled relationships of a small town into a gripping page turner. She is able to combine intertwining plot lines into a satisfying conclusion. Characters are unique and well developed individuals who must struggle with their impulses and long buried secrets. The resolution does not feel tacked on, but an organic part of the whole. The premise: a girl gone missing, with suspicion clouding relationships, and ugly memories of an old mystery will keep you turning the pages. The complex characters will leave you wanting to know more.

I'm disappointed in this book. It has a lot of characters and uses them to tell the story without identifying who they are from scene to scene. When you see a gimmick like this, where the reader has to piece together who it is that is telling a bit of the story now, you know the writer is not entirely interested in the characters as people who will choose their own actions because of who and what they are and the pressures they are under. Instead Unger uses them as ways to force her readers to try to figure out not just who is thinking about the events of the story now, but more deeply, as in just *who is this person really, behind what s/he is thinking?* Unger also uses the characters as vehicles for her theme. They stand for *confusion*, they stand for *entanglement*, they stand for *abuser and abused and witness of abuse*. I prefer to relate to characters as people, not as ideas or as confusing links to the past. This is one of the major flaws in the book, and I believe it's why a number of previous reviewers felt "flat" or didn't want to finish the book because they couldn't "relate to" anyone in the book. This novel is supposed to be a mystery. Rick Cooper's girlfriend Charlene (a musician) has gone missing, as has her stepfather; there is blood which no policeman tries to type or otherwise identify; Charlene's mother Melody (a musical name) is immediately frantic though the two have always argued and Charlene has often run off for a few hours. Everyone is recalling the mutilation and murder of the young musician Sarah a generation ago, when Rick's father Jones, Char's mother Melody, Jones' wife Maggie, the disgraced cop Travis, and a few other less important characters, all went to the local high school presided over by principal Elizabeth, who is Maggie's mother. Jones is now the local police investigator, and he suspects son Rick of Charlene's disappearance. Jones had been the object of a kind of demanding abuse from his mother, and now he seems to have never found a good thing about his son, and says so (verbal abuse). Rick's mother Maggie always takes his side to keep Rick from having to do it, causing strife between the parents and this kind of infantilization of poor Rick, whom she swears she will always call by his baby name, despite his preferences. As a psychologist to adolescents you would think that she would know when it is time to let a child begin to move away. A long time later we learn that it used to be great between Rick and Jones, but you'd never know it from Jones' thoughts, interpretations of things, and behaviors for the first half of the novel. His suspicion of his son, whom Maggie (and we) believe to be a good kid, tells us more about Jones than Rick, something that Maggie again takes way too long to figure out. We don't really understand why Jones originally followed Maggie out of The Hollows (and there's a name for you!) to ask her out because nothing is shown of their relationship in high school (except her own interest in him) and because their relationship is so miserable for most of the novel. Characters just somehow have linked up, the way Exterminator Charley links up with Wanda, without our being able to see why. As time passes and Charlene is not found, Charley steps up to provide a vital clue to Charlene's disappearance. (This kind of -- surely deliberate -- potential confusion of the names of characters (Charlene/Charley) seems to be a part of the overall theme of this book, which is "entanglement" -- another word for confusion. The author postulates that everyone is entangled by the fragility of family relationships and chance, but actually it is the brutality of abuse within families that entangles them. What is fragile in this book is a few lucky chances, but mostly the tenuous connections that we readers make with the characters. Another reviewer rightly asked why the characters who left The Hollows came back, and wondered why they didn't make any connections outside that town. The implication seems to be that the town is a three-dimensional web full of spiders and victims that cannot escape. The use of confusable names and generations and jobs and unidentified narrators underlines that it doesn't really matter who you are, you can't escape. It isn't Unger's writing potential that is at fault here. It's her ambition. She wants to make a point, and so she abuses her own characters. They are her stand-ins for theme and mystery. They are the nails she hammers at again and again to drive in some kind of awe at the way things from the past keep interfering with the future. Everyone carries its baggage (except Charley). Characters are even saddled with names that connect them to each other or professions for reasons I can't decipher. From the Melody/Charmaine/Sarah musical representatives to the police cadre including the former police chief called only "Chief", his abused son the disgraced cop Travis who continues to abuse the teenaged "Marshall" who now is the psychologist Maggie's feared patient, while her husband Jones abuses Rick when he himself was abused by his mother, connections are hammered home. Often we don't even know why. An example is the Lily who was lost (murdered?) as a teen and whom Charley gives up mourning when he gives lilies to his new friend Wanda (whose name predicts how she will change his life). And excuse me, but can anyone not be confused by two minor characters named Lily and Leila, the former of whom has escaped The Hollows (by dying!) and the latter who has escaped by cutting off all her relationships to the "Chief/Travis/Marshall" abusive situation and then, unwillingly, getting entangled in it again? To deliberately confuse or underdefine characters for her readers, in order to underline a theme, is a dangerous hammer for an author to use. Most readers prefer to relate heart to heart with characters who are people in trouble but have a chance to escape, if they do the right things. But Unger is interested in reinforcing her theme, not giving us characters (except Charley) to relate to. Worse, she cheats by forcing us be a party to her characters' musings on current and past events *while carefully holding back any musings that would remove some of the mystery or suspense from her novel*. That's why characters seem "flat" or "unreal" and why other reviewers say that the characters are underdeveloped. I would agree with these points of view, and even add that the reader's intelligence is underestimated in the author's quest for "bigger things". She wants fragility to be her theme, so she calls her novel "Fragile" and she does all kinds of weird things to make people and relationships tenuous/confusing; but no matter how many times she repeats the word "fragile" in the book, in reality what we come away with is not the idea of fragility, but the way past brutality imprisons you in the present. Unger is a potentially good writer, good enough to make me want to cry in places, but I resisted because I knew I was being manipulated. She chose a concept to be her main character, and the concept she wants doesn't come across. Further, she goes against the ancient rule for writers, which is "Show, don't tell." A good example for all would-be ambitious writers, but otherwise, not at all a satisfactory book. It’s a very good lesson to all writers to be reminded that people read an author’s stories because they care about the characters in their situations instead of the other way around. All the thematic brilliance or nuances in the world cannot make up for characters that the author doesn’t care *enough* about to let them live, instead of being exemplars of a theme.